After this post went online, I heard from VA Press Secretary Josh Taylor. The upshot is that the VA considers the Congressman from Florida to have overstated his case: In fact, VA programs, including medical care, ARE, in fact, exempt from cuts that would be imposed by sequestration. In the official statement, the VA says: “The Secretary simply reiterated the guidance OMB provided on this back
in April - VA programs are exempt and the Administration has not yet
addressed the applicability of the sequester to VA “Federal
Administrative Expenses.”

In other words, the VA says VA programs that touch the public are safe. The smaller question about how sequestration would affect administrative costs is not resolved.

(The original post is below.)

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VA Secretary Eric Shinseki testified Wednesday before a rare joint meeting of the House Veterans and Armed Services Committees. According to committee members, he acknowledged that the VA is NOT exempt from cuts if sequestration occurs -- although President Obama said this week the VA WILL be exempt.

From a press release by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the chair of the Veterans Affairs committee,
Shinseki "confirmed that under sequestration, VA would face cuts, possibly affecting the
administration of veterans’ benefits and services, stating, 'VA is exempt from
sequestration except for administrative costs… I don’t have a definition of
administrative costs right now.'”Miller declared in the statement: "I am now demanding that VA and the President define ‘administrative costs.’"

In Reno, when Shinseki addressed the VFW. Here's his speech, in which he notes the increased claims backlog was a sign of progress.

Said Shinseki: "Three and a half years ago, the total claims inventory was roughly
400,000. Today, it's approximately 880,000. The backlog—the number of
claims older than 125 days—was about 135,000 in 2009 and is roughly
580,000 today. Growth in these numbers—total and backlogged claims—is
what happens when we increase access. But it was the right thing to
do—for Vietnam Veterans, for Gulf War Veterans, and for combat Veterans
of all wars."

It wasn’t advocacy that we heard Tuesday–either the loud or the quiet
kind–when the secretary said this: “I have committed to ending the
claims backlog in 2015, by putting in place a system that processes all
claims within 125 days at a 98 percent accuracy level.” Yes, 125 days.
That’s over 4 months. That means that three years from now, a veteran
filing a claim might still have to wait more than a third of a year.
This is an absurd vision.

The disaster at the VA is not one of Shinseki’s making, but he hasn’t
fixed it, and his goals fall far short. The VA is an
antiquated bureaucracy in desperate need of an overhaul.